David Davis, at the Libertarian Alliance, is exercised by this item from the Telegraph:
Drivers will have to declare every 10 years whether they are medically able to get behind the wheel, according to proposals… Tests, costing up to £80, will be offered to drivers to check whether they are fit to drive. Anyone who chooses not to take the tests but declares themselves able to take to the roads will be committing a criminal offence if they fail to meet the established standards.
What is not mentioned in the Telegraph article is how insurance companies will react to this measure.
My guess is that they will massively load the (state taxed) premiums of those who do not send in a chit from the office to certify that they have paid their £80. I do not suppose for one moment that there will be anything like the Night of the Long Knives foreseen by DD; motorists are far too valuable as revenue-generators for their numbers to be substantially reduced. A few of the most blatantly blind, halt or daft drivers will be very publicly hounded off the road, to persuade people that the scheme is ‘working’, but there will certainly be no significant drop in the numbers of payers of car tax, fuel tax, ‘congestion’ charges, camera fines, parking fines, council parking charges, etc. etc. ad naus.
Faced with a choice between paying the state £80 blackmail money every 10 years, which is only £8 a year, or paying their insurers an unpredictable and arbitrary loading which can hardly fail to exceed this modest figure, most drivers will elect to pay the state.
Once the pattern is established, and people are accustomed to the new exaction, the interval between tests will be reduced to 5 years; once again the insurance industry will be relied upon to persuade drivers that the alternative is worse.
Finally the tests will become compulsory and annual, and rather more costly. The insurance industry will not lose out; the state will repay its assistance with yet another scare campaign, probably this time about ‘driving standards’ rather than health, allowing vast increases of premiums paid by those who elect not to retake driving tests on a regular basis, and the gravy-train will start on another circuit of its curiously pointsless track.
The irony behind this story is that in a more enlightened environment, medical fitness makes perfect sense. We already have a rudimentary eye check – rudimentary being the word. A basic physical; a lite version of that applied to a pilot’s license would ensure that everyone who takes to the wheel is fit to do so. This, along with regular driving assessments (not carried out by the DSA, I think) and a more rigorous and realistic approach to the initial assessment of competence would go some way to improving driving standards on our roads.
Now back in the real world…
Unfortunately, the sharks see a fast buck and that kills it stone dead for me. Besides, I detest insurance companies and will resist anything that inflates their coffers.
As a pilot I was accustomed to a level of medical enquiries for certification which would astonish the average driver, and to a culture which expected one always to be studying for something, racking up hours for something, or having to pass something again.
When one learns to fly one’s first solo occurs about half-way through the process of qualification, not immediately after passing a test and ritually tearing up some L-plates.
That naughty drivers are sometimes severely punished by having to retake a test (the horror!) is amusing to pilots, who are always taking tests.
If drivers were as regulated as pilots there would be very few road accidents. However, what we used to say was that if doctors were also so regulated, the big issue at the next election would be the overpopulation.
To be brutally frank the government is so dependent upon its reliable and spineless cash-cow that more or less anyone is allowed to drive (as witness the evidence), which is why I don’t think they’ll ever stop all that many people from so doing, on this or any other pretext.